Review: Assassin’s Creed Shadows

The Assassin’s Creed franchise has long been a familiar comfort. The type of game perfect for busy parents like me.

Vast and juicy enough to play over several months, accessible and varied to lend itself to staccato play sessions, like when work and family obligations dominate.

It’s a pick-up-and-play sort of game that you can keep coming back to, making incremental progress in the short stints, and meaningful strides during public holidays and weekends.

Like many peers, I’ve loved this franchise since first scaling the Dome of the Rock in the original back in 2007.

That love was tested a bit during Assassin’s Creed Unity, Rogue and Syndicate era but rekindled with the action RPG heavy Origins; Odyssey, my favourite game of the franchise; Valhalla; and Mirage, which gets bonus points for having the adhan recited at appropriate times and not at 7am as a morning alarm in a Hollywood blockbuster.

Set in feudal Japan, Assassin’s Creed Shadows reshapes how the series plays by giving us two wildly different leads: Naoe, a shinobi in the shadows, and Yasuke, a tank of a samurai who doesn’t need to sneak when he can slice through most things.

Gameplay

Shadows splits its gameplay across Naoe’s stealth-driven approach and Yasuke’s brute strength.

Where Naoe crouches behind walls, grapples up rooftops, and takes enemies down quietly, Yasuke is all about open confrontation. He’s got the heavy swings, crowd control, and the confidence to bust down doors like they’re made of paper.

It’s not the first Assassin’s Creed to offer two protagonists, but it’s easily the most enjoyable. There’s freedom in how you play, and you can switch between the two outside of combat, which feels slick and fluid.

Whether you’re sneaking into a fortress or charging through the front gate, the game empowers. That said, Naoe feels more in tune with the traditional Assassin’s Creed vibe — she’s faster, more tactical, and has the series’ signature Eagle Vision.

Yasuke can’t stealth kill, but he makes up for it by surviving fights most assassins wouldn’t dream of starting. Like Grand Theft Auto 5’s multi-protagonist options, I hope Ubisoft continues with this feature in future games, especially the more ambitious titles.

The stealth is satisfying, the combat is brutal, and there’s a good layer of strategy in deciding who to use and when. There’s even a “simplified combat” option if button-mashing combos aren’t your thing, though difficulty still scales with enemy strength.

One clever touch is how time and seasons shift as you travel, snow muffles your footsteps, and summer ponds can hide you. It’s subtle, but it gives infiltration richer texture.

There are the occasional parkour faux pas where your character seemingly does the opposite of what you intended but it doesn’t end in death. I wouldn’t have wanted it to feel magnetic and foolproof like Uncharted games where Nathan Drake would magically compensate if you didn’t time your jump correctly.

Graphics

From dense bamboo forests to fog-covered mountaintops and golden fields lit by a dying sun, the game is often drop-dead gorgeous. Shadows doesn’t just look like feudal Japan, it feels like it.

The lighting is atmospheric, the weather dynamic, and seasonal changes aren’t just cosmetic. They influence gameplay in real ways.

Character models are generally sharp, though there are a few hiccups, flickering textures, floating hair, the occasional enemy glitching mid-cutscene. Nothing game-breaking, but enough to pull you out of the immersion every now and then.

Still, most of the time, the game looks and runs like a flagship title, especially in motion. It sometimes suffers from uncanny valley with ‘dead lifeless eyes’ but I might be sensitive to it because I’m also replaying The Last of Us 2 in preparation for the TV show and those character models are gorgeous.

Expanding on my opening point, this is the beauty of Assassin’s Creed games, you could commit and play nothing else, and you will enjoy it, or it can be your side game, something you play when you don’t want to think about what to play, bucking the modern trend of being paralysed by choice when scrolling through Netflix and not choosing anything to consume.

Value for Money

There’s a lot to do, some of it meaningful, some of it filler. Beyond the main revenge-driven narrative, you will meditate, duel, track down targets, and stumble into side quests that spiral into full story arcs. The base-building system returns in a lighter form, and scouts can help you find objectives.

You’re not just ticking boxes here, much of the content ties back into the world and story. Micro-transactions exist, but they’re not shoved in your face. With multiple playstyles, seasonal effects, a flexible mission structure, and the sheer scale of the map, there’s plenty to chew on. I found some of the mini games to be a bit hit and miss.